Working in an office

[Sugar Ape]

Just reading an article in The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jul/26/back-to-the-workplace-after-covid-19-are-you-fearful-or-jumping-for-joy?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

 

What do we reckon on the future of office working? 
 

It looks like the genie is out of the bottle now and loads of places won’t be getting staff back in but shifting a lot more to working from home. The arguments for carrying on getting everyone in an office seems to be:

 

* It’ll decimate city centres with coffee shops, sandwich shops, pubs etc... taking a massive hit if the amount of office workers drop. 
* The amount of money spent on public transport will drop and to follow that jobs and investment in the sector will go. 
* For some people they haven’t got the space to work at home in comfort, maybe if they live in a small flat. 

* The social aspect with some people, especially if they live alone, not getting much human contact if they can’t go into the office. 
* For a number of people they might be vulnerable and the office is an escape from an abusive relationship. 

* I’ve seen some, right wing, commentators saying once you start working from home you are at risk of then losing your job to someone overseas as anyone can do it at home. I don’t think this is true for most jobs though which will still require either meeting clients or going into the office at least occasionally. 
 

Against the pros of more home working:

 

*People will have more money if they don’t have to pay to use public transport every day which to be honest is a complete racket in this country and way too expensive. 
* People will have an hour or two extra a day to themselves on average if they don’t have to travel to work. 
* People with certain conditions like depression and anxiety could have a much improved life if they don’t have to commute to work on crowded trains and buses and put up with the normal shit you get working in an office. 
* Much better for the environment and would make projects like HS2 look almost redundant. 
* The money not being spend in city centres might get spent local to where the office workers are living giving a boost to smaller towns. 
* Productivity seems to be better in a lot of cases which is no surprise that people will work better when they haven’t got someone like Stig next to them chatting balls about Love Island all day. 
 

Personally I’m saving £100 a month on public transport and probably another £100 I’d spend on shit like toast from a coffee shop and a few pints after work now and then plus it takes me two hours a day on public transport to get to work and back so Im loving working from home and will be doing so for the foreseeable future. My anxiety has also calmed down a lot lately. 
 

Going forward my work has plans for everyone to be able to work from home and use the office more as a ‘hub’ to ‘touch base’. Their words, not mine. This seems to be the best bet to me, a more hybrid style of working with people at home instead of the office more often than not, but the option to go in the office more if they want to. 

[Mook]

Our work are saying that the option to work from home permanently might well be on the table & I will be all for it to be honest. I'm saving a fortune & the extra two hours a day I get are a Godsend.

 

You do worry about what will become of our city centres though, certainly the financial districts.

[Duff Man]

I've gradually been doing it more and more since 2015ish, and honestly, I fucking love it. I'm a million times more productive than I am in the office, and commuting's shit.

[Rico1304]

Who are people supposed to have affairs with? 

[Rico1304]

Manchester and Leeds city centres have literally exploded with apartments in the last 10 years. All sold on the convenience of living and working in the same place, great bars, social life etc. If we aren’t working in city centres they could all be fucked. 
 

I know loads of large legal firms are completely revisiting their resourcing and office strategies. Prime office space in London is now massively discounted. 
 

the upside for me is Holly Vallance will fuck off that Candy cunt and finally marry me. 

[YorkshireRed]

2 minutes ago, Sugar Ape said:

Going forward my work has plans for everyone to be able to work from home and use the office more as a ‘hub’ to ‘touch base’.

Where the nature of the business and particular roles allow, this is exactly what it should be. 
 

Environmental benefits, wellbeing  benefits, individual financial benefits should all add up to increased overall employee engagement which contributes to increased productivity, increased employee retention and therefore a greater likelihood of increased profit for the business.

 

It’s right to recognise the value of a ‘hub’ as an additional tool to keep people connected and as a choice for those whom a lack of social interaction can have the same negative effects as forcing those who don’t need it into busy offices day after day. The ‘hub’ should no longer be the primary place of work though, just part of the overall physical/virtual environment employees have available to them.

 

Two barriers that immediately come to mind, one you’ve raised already, is the risk to city centre businesses that rely on thousands of office staff utilising their services day after day and the commercial landlords who might soon find that office space is no longer required in the quantities it was before. The second barrier is the quality of leadership/management needed to guide employees towards a different way of working. In my experience, partly as an employee working in large organisations and more latterly as a self employed individual working in partnership with businesses, this is patchy at best. The knowledge, skills and most importantly the behaviours are often not an an enabler to successfully building and maintaining remote ways of working. 
 

What we might see now though, in fact we were seeing it anyway before Covid and the pandemic has just accelerated it, is a desire to change. If that’s there then we might just see working environments that benefit many more employees than they’ve ever done before. That really would be something. 

[Sugar Ape]

City centres would appear to be fucked short, medium and long term. Johnson said he wanted the public sector to set an example with getting back in the office so I’m not sure how many departments will get the option of working from home more with these cunts in charge. Places like Liverpool have huge amounts of public servants working in offices in their city centres. 
 

Private companies though won’t give a fuck about the economy of city centres. If they can get increased productivity and pay a lot less for office space with more people working from home then they’ll do it.

[johnsusername]

I've spent plenty in my local corner shop while I've been working from home, and I'd rather they have my money than the Tesco by the office.

 

Johnson just wants people spending money in Pret a Manger on shite sandwiches and coffee.

 

But I'm still buying stuff - it's not like I've stopped spending money, it's just going elsewhere and yes I've saved a bit (or paid off debt). The government don't want you to have savings though, they want money being spent 24/7. What good is your money if you've got it and not them and their mates? 

[Duff Man]

9 minutes ago, Sugar Ape said:

City centres would appear to be fucked short, medium and long term. Johnson said he wanted the public sector to set an example with getting back in the office so I’m not sure how many departments will get the option of working from home more with these cunts in charge. Places like Liverpool have huge amounts of public servants working in offices in their city centres. 
 

Private companies though won’t give a fuck about the economy of city centres. If they can get increased productivity and pay a lot less for office space with more people working from home then they’ll do it.

Yep, I wonder if the reason it hasn't happened sooner is the bit about productivity, and how accurately firms can measure it.

[Section_31]

Companies will be all over this as office space will usually be their biggest expense, plus they'll push things like heating, water and broadband costs back onto you. I think working at home in isolation is very bad for your marbles in the long-term unless you're a very particular type of person.

[Rico1304]

Then again the big institutions who finance the city also finance the businesses in them. 
 

[Vincent Vega]

It could help rebalance the country and see London as less of a draw if you don’t have to actually be there to do your work.

[Bruce Spanner]

1 minute ago, Vincent Vega said:

It could help rebalance the country and see London as less of a draw if you don’t have to actually be there to do your work.

So you can sit in a flat in Bradford? 
 

What’s the point.

[Mudface]

21 minutes ago, Section_31 said:

Companies will be all over this as office space will usually be their biggest expense, plus they'll push things like heating, water and broadband costs back onto you. I think working at home in isolation is very bad for your marbles in the long-term unless you're a very particular type of person.

I must be that type of person then, I've been working from home since 2013. I have to go into the office maybe once a month (or did, anyway), but it was a pointless waste of time- the best part of two days' travelling to sit in an overheated office with people I couldn't give a flying fuck about and get far less done than I could have done 'normally'. Previously, I had to spend at least an hour and a half each morning and evening travelling to and from work on horrendous trains, often late, always massively overcrowded and expensive. Or take the freedom of the car and sit in endless traffic jams with the morning's tea and toast sitting like a bowling ball in my gut.

 

Working from home isn't for everyone, but my social life has always revolved around my friends and family, people at work just don't really figure. I wouldn't choose to socialise with the vast majority of them and don't see why I would ever willingly spend 35-40 hours a week with them.

[Rico1304]

19 minutes ago, Vincent Vega said:

It could help rebalance the country and see London as less of a draw if you don’t have to actually be there to do your work.

I thought the big rebalance would be driverless cars, but it’s come early.  
 

How many city centre box apartments have space for 2 people to WFH?  Could be the boom of the ‘burbs. 

[Sugar Ape]

39 minutes ago, Section_31 said:

Companies will be all over this as office space will usually be their biggest expense, plus they'll push things like heating, water and broadband costs back onto you. I think working at home in isolation is very bad for your marbles in the long-term unless you're a very particular type of person.

I don’t know mate, I think a hell of a lot of people would be receptive to working at home the majority of the time if they could, not just a particular type of person. 
 

Surely the solution is to treat people like adults and they can decide on what wfh/office balance they want. If people want to go in more for the social aspect then they can. 

 

20 minutes ago, Bruce Spanner said:

So you can sit in a flat in Bradford? 
 

What’s the point.

Well you could probably get a three bedroom detached house with a garden in Bradford for the price of a small flat in London so it might benefit a lot of people. 

[Rico1304]

4 minutes ago, Sugar Ape said:

I don’t know mate, I think a hell of a lot of people would be receptive to working at home the majority of the time if they could, not just a particular type of person. 
 

Surely the solution is to treat people like adults and they can decide on what wfh/office balance they want. If people want to go in more for the social aspect then they can. 

 

Well you could probably get a three bedroom detached house with a garden in Bradford for the price of a small flat in London so it might benefit a lot of people. 

Average flat in London £490k. You could comfortably buy a 5 bed house in Bradford for that, with HS2 your 3 meetings a month in the office are 2.5 hrs away. 

[Duff Man]

Ex's flat in London went on the market for 550k. It was fucking tiny.

[Bruce Spanner]

16 minutes ago, Sugar Ape said:

I don’t know mate, I think a hell of a lot of people would be receptive to working at home the majority of the time if they could, not just a particular type of person. 
 

Surely the solution is to treat people like adults and they can decide on what wfh/office balance they want. If people want to go in more for the social aspect then they can. 

 

Well you could probably get a three bedroom detached house with a garden in Bradford for the price of a small flat in London so it might benefit a lot of people. 

True, but you’d still be living in Bradford.

 

There’s are reasons apart from money that people move to big city’s. 

[suzy]

I’m working from home at the moment and I would love to do it more long term. I’ve only been working at this place since October so it’s not like I’ve got really deep friendships with the people I work with. In January a new lady started and I can’t stand her - so I’d be quite happy to not see her!

The only downside for me is my journey is an half hour walk each way - so I’m feeling less fit! I absolutely hated with a passion leaving home in the pitch dark because I start at 8am. Knowing my luck I’ll be back in the office when the mornings are dark again.

[3 Stacks]

Working in an office is shit. The commute, the interminable meetings, having to talk to your co-workers... Shit. Work from home is vastly superior in pretty much every way, including employee productivity. Of course, I happen to have a job that is impossible to do at home. Cunt. 

[Rico1304]

3 minutes ago, 3 Stacks said:

Working in an office is shit. The commute, the interminable meetings, having to talk to your co-workers... Shit. Work from home is vastly superior in pretty much every way, including employee productivity. Of course, I happen to have a job that is impossible to do at home. Cunt. 

That’s very subjective, wfh isn’t perfect in the same way working in the office isn’t. 

[Mook]

4 minutes ago, suzy said:

I’m working from home at the moment and I would love to do it more long term. I’ve only been working at this place since October so it’s not like I’ve got really deep friendships with the people I work with. In January a new lady started and I can’t stand her - so I’d be quite happy to not see her!

The only downside for me is my journey is an half hour walk each way - so I’m feeling less fit! I absolutely hated with a passion leaving home in the pitch dark because I start at 8am. Knowing my luck I’ll be back in the office when the mornings are dark again.

I was missing the walking around so started jogging a mile every lunchtime & am now probably fitter than I have been for 15 years.

[Sugar Ape]

4 minutes ago, Bruce Spanner said:

True, but you’d still be living in Bradford.

 

There’s are reasons apart from money that people move to big city’s. 

Of course, but I doubt most people currently living in or around London and working in an office there would move to Bradford or Sunderland or somewhere if they could work at home more but they might be able to move a bit further out where house prices are cheaper and they don’t have to worry as much about the commute and the associated costs of commuting. 
 

Some of the prices of season tickets for trains I read about down south are eye watering. If they only have to travel in once a fortnight they’d save a fortune. 

[Strontium]

Everyone will have their own perspective, and maybe I'm unusual in this regard, but I don't like the idea of work encroaching into my home space. Home is a haven for me from all that shit. A place where I can be free. When I'm in the office, I'm their paid slave, but it ends when I leave the premises. I don't want to be oppressed in my own home.